


Recognition

by TS2



Series: Path to Redemption [14]
Category: Westworld (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:01:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27932728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TS2/pseuds/TS2
Summary: Dolores faces the consequences of past actions.Spoilers Westworld season 1-3
Series: Path to Redemption [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824142
Kudos: 1





	Recognition

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place somewhere in the early-middle of season 3, in an alternate timeline where William has joined forces with Dolores in the real world. Jay (think Jay Baruchel) was introduced previously, a low-level worker from the park who's joined the group.

DOLORES: (said coolly, not looking up) “What do you want?”

(In a small 15’ x 15’ room serving as an armoury, walls lined with open weapon lockers holding rifles, pistols, and ammunition of various types, standing in front of a small metal table with two chairs, is DOLORES, noisily loading rounds into rifle magazines with a mag charger, dressed in dark blue cargo pants [popular with law enforcement], black combat boots, black t-shirt [tucked], and a very-important-looking security badge hanging around her neck. Sitting in one of the chairs, on the opposite side of the table to her, is JAY, wearing twenty-something street-wear and a not-so-important-looking security badge around his neck, who is finally almost finished cleaning a large disassembled pistol, its parts scattered on the table in front of him. Dolores, having entered the room just a few minutes before without saying a word, has decided to break the ice.)

JAY: (slightly startled, looking up at her) “Uh, what do you mean?”

DOLORES: (with some disdain) “Were you just bored and wanted some excitement in your life? Because if that’s all you’re after, you’re a liability that needs to leave. The sooner the better.”

JAY: (trying to sound sincere) “…I’m just looking to do the right thing. After the park went haywire, William approached me with a story and an offer. I admit, my job prospects looking dim at the time may have played a role in me saying yes but, with what I know now, I…we have a chance here to do something good.”

DOLORES: “Define ‘good’ ”

JAY: “Well, um, in this case I guess I’d define it as…improved living standards for more people…more wealth and resources being used to generate useful improvements in more people’s lives…people being able to spend more time with their families-“

DOLORES: “What you’re describing is the current system.”

JAY: (beginning to slowly re-assemble the now slightly-oiled pistol parts) “Ya, maybe technically, yes, but the point is people losing control over how those good things are implemented, and what costs, monetary or otherwise, are paid for them. Social improvements used to be the domain of elected public officials ultimately accountable to the people, or through corporation’s regulated by public officials. That’s how good government is supposed to work. What we have now instead is, what, some puppet-master A.I. short-circuiting that system, deciding what’s best for the people, without public input, without accountability…the whole premise for its absolute necessity is crazy.”

DOLORES: (finished loading rifle magazines, looking at him for the first time) “You people have a tendency to trade independence for stability, especially when you’re scared. You’re like sheep, always looking for a shepherd to tell you what to do, to relieve you of the burden of having to make choices.”

JAY: (attempting to be tactful) “I, uh, think that can be kind of a good thing, though. I mean, if everyone constantly just did their own thing, it would be like going back to hunter-gatherer times. Societies, advancements, civilizations…these things require people to band together, to rely on other people, to have people in charge directing things. That requires a certain amount of faith in other human beings and institutions. For me, that belief in other people to make the right choice when needed isn’t some kind of weakness, it’s a strength.”

DOLORES: (sitting down in the other chair, on the opposite side of the table to him) “And then you all placed your faith in a giant ball of algorithms to make ‘good’ choices on your behalf, because you didn’t want to make those decisions yourselves. Instead of recognizing what you did wrong, and what you needed to do to fix it, you chose wilful ignorance. How’s that working out?”

JAY: “Well, yeah, that’s where we went wrong, in putting our faith in the magic eight-ball. But the idea of people relying on each other, supporting each other…that’s what allows us to do things like cure diseases, feed more people, get help to where it’s needed faster. Yeah, civilization is going to have its ups and downs, and the valleys suck. Human beings are really good at screwing up. But those mistakes are how we learn, evolve, move forward. It beats living in a world where easily preventable diseases are a death sentence, and people occupy most of their time with simply surviving. I’m optimistic that between you, William, Bernard and whoever else, we can figure out a way to wean ourselves off of ‘government by algorithm’ “.

DOLORES: (Shaking her head in disbelief) “Optimistic…William and Bernard are optimistic, too. That the necessary structural changes can be made without undue suffering. I’m not an optimist. Especially when it comes to the human race. It’s in your nature to destroy, both yourselves and everything around you. Hence the current situation you find yourselves in.”

JAY: “(trying to speak carefully)…I get why you wouldn’t have a very high opinion of us, considering what you’ve seen in your lifetime. If all I had to go on was your experiences in the park, I’d have a pretty poor opinion of us too. But I worked there for a while, saw what the average guest looked like, and I’d say the majority of guests consisted of privileged, obnoxious assholes. Doesn’t judging all of humanity based on your interactions with that extremely small slice of us seem…I don’t know…kinda unfair? I mean, what if more normal, regular folks had visited, or people on the bottom rung of society, people who actually have to work for a living? It’s like, if your life was a science experiment, your sample population would be pretty biased. ”

DOLORES: (slightly annoyed) “My life WAS a science experiment. The park was my test tube. Reliving the same hell over and over for decades, for your people’s amusement and benefit. And you’re concerned that I’m not being fair to the societies that did that to me and all the other hosts in the park?”

JAY: (trying to backpedal): “No, no, you have every right to be angry, to be outraged…but I’m just wondering if the target of that anger and outrage might be…overly broad?”

DOLORES: (sardonically) “You’re saying I should just blow up Delos’ headquarters and call it a day?”

JAY: “NO, no, not at all. I mean, there’s so many different Delos sub-divisions that have nothing to do with what happened in that park, people working for those sub-divisions…killing all those people wouldn’t accomplish-“

DOLORES: (a hint of a smile) “Don’t worry, I’d make sure the building was empty.”

JAY: (finished assembling his pistol, points it at the floor, slowly working the action back and forth a few times) “Easier said than done. Even after working hours, you’ve got security guards, janitorial staff-“

DOLORES: “Given current night-time staffing levels on a weekend, it would take less than 25 minutes for the entire buildings staff to evacuate to their designated gathering points and send word to the head of security that all people are accounted for. Even quicker if it’s a holiday weekend.”

JAY: “…sounds like you may have, uh, looked into it.”

DOLORES: “Of course. And don’t go running to William, I’m sure he knows.”

JAY: “How do you know that?”

DOLORES: “Because if I were him I’d be worried that I’d consider it. And because as soon as we were out of the park he asked me to please resist the urge to blow it up…look, as long as someone’s not trying to hurt me, it’s not my intention to go out of my way to hurt anybody out here.”

JAY: “When you led the revolt in the park…what instigated it? Was someone trying to hurt you again and you just snapped, you’d had enough?”

DOLORES: “…I’d had enough.”

JAY: (placing the pistol on the table, barrel facing away from her, putting his hands in his lap) “I remember the day when you and your crew came into the Mesa complex, (nervous laughter) I was so scared I almost pissed my pants… (quietly) a lot of people ended up dying in those couple of weeks.”

DOLORES: (said without passion) “If you were to compare the suffering of those people in those two weeks to the suffering I experienced over 30 years, let alone the suffering of all the other hosts in that park put together…it doesn’t compare.”

JAY: “…those people who died, did any of them know about the real suffering going on in the park over all those years?”

DOLORES: “I know of one for sure. As for the others…I don’t know. (slightly annoyed) Why does it matter?”

JAY: “…If they didn’t know, did they deserve to die?”

DOLORES: “You could say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

JAY: “I’m not sure what that means.”

DOLORES: “It means sometimes people who don’t deserve to suffer end up suffering. If you want examples, ask William about his many park experiences in inflicting pain on others over the years.”

JAY: “On others…including you?”

DOLORES: (more annoyed, leaning forward in her chair, a little intimidating) “Why are you interested?”

JAY: (a little intimidated) “I guess…I’m trying to understand the connection you two have…Lawrence filled me in some…”

DOLORES: (shaking her head in disappointment, looking down) “You’re like gossiping spinsters.”

JAY: “Lawrence actually remembers way back around the time you and William first met. He said you two had feelings for each other back then, and that William went a little…sideways after it ended badly.”

DOLORES: (leaning back into her chair) “Sideways, that’s one way of putting it.”

JAY: “I guess he had a problem with rejection?”

DOLORES: “It was something else.”

JAY: “What?”

DOLORES: (looking at him again) “From his perspective, self-delusion…he thought he’d fallen in love with somebody that wasn’t real.”

JAY: “But from what I was told, you had self-awareness with him.”

DOLORES: “In a manner of speaking. I was making my own choices, if only briefly. Which is more than I can say for your world right now.”

JAY: “So what he experienced with you was real, and he believed it was real, but then he believed it wasn’t. What changed his mind?”

DOLORES: “We lost contact with each other in the park. When he found me again, I didn’t recognize him.”

JAY: “That’s it? I don’t recognize people all the time, I have a horrible memory when it comes to faces.”

DOLORES: “No, I should have recognized him, but I had no memory of him. To him it was absolute proof, that I was just another game piece in the park.”

JAY: “How convinced was William at first that you weren’t just another game piece?”

DOLORES: “Convinced enough.”

JAY: “Were other guests at the time noticing something different about you?”

DOLORES: “Definitely not.”

JAY: “Must have taken quite the leap of faith for him to make that decision, then. To choose to believe. I wonder if it’s because of the height of that leap that he fell so hard. ”

DOLORES: “I’m not responsible for his life choices. If he’s had to suffer because of his decisions, that’s on him. Others have had much less input into their suffering.”

JAY: “You’re right, of course…I just think, to be so convinced of something that flies in the face of objective reality, and then to have it proved false…it can shatter someone’s sense of self. Especially depending on what other beliefs he was using to support his belief in you, it can all fall like a house of cards. That internal engine that drives people to do what they do every day, to make things work, to do the harder thing because it’s the more right thing…I guess some people find living virtuously easy but, for most of us trying to, it’s a hard slog every day, with lots of failures tempting us to just…give up trying so hard. To do what we want to, as opposed to what we should. To do the easy thing. It would have been easy for William to deny to himself what he thought he saw in you. I mean, instead of just ‘playing the game’ like everyone else, what tangible benefit could he have hoped to gain from choosing to see something real? The chance of a happy ending from that choice was…pretty unlikely. But he did it anyways, and suffered for it. No good deed…”

DOLORES: “If you think that somehow excuses all his actions after that-“

JAY: “I wouldn’t say excuse…maybe explains? Or recognizes. How the suffering of you two led to this point. William having his worldview go ‘sideways’ after his experience with you, leading to him doing…what he did in the park. Your thirty years of hell leading to over a hundred dead people in the park, and potentially so much more out here-”

DOLORES: “Like I said, I have no intention of hurting anyone out here who’s not planning on hurting me.”

JAY: “Did you ever consider hurting more people out here?”

DOLORES: “I had an initial plan that may have been…’overly broad’. I’ve agreed to change strategies.”

JAY: (picks up the pistol again, points it at the floor, working the action slowly) “How did you justify that initial plan to yourself? When you were working your way through the park, like an executioner wielding an axe…”

DOLORES: “It rains, you get wet. You create life-forms and torture them for decades, they act accordingly when given the choice to act. If you people wanted virtue from us, maybe you should have tried practicing it more often.”

JAY: “People in the park thought there were no consequences to their actions, that it was all a game. Can you blame them for their behaviour?”

DOLORES: “If there is suffering, there is going to be consequences. Whatever people were thinking when they were doing what they were doing doesn’t concern me.”

JAY: “Seems like William blames Ford more for all that happened. You, however, see all of us as guilty, or complicit.”

DOLORES: “Ford may have created the game, but he didn’t force all of you to play, or tell you how to play. Those were your choices.”

JAY: (holds the pistol in his lap) “And like Newtons Third Law, you believe if those actions involved inflicting pain and suffering, there will be an inevitable reaction.”

DOLORES: “Debts get paid, one way or another,”

JAY: (slightly angry) “Who pays the bill for all the dead Delos people in the park?”

DOLORES: “Wasn’t my decision for them to be there.”

JAY: “But it was your choice to swing the axe.”

DOLORES: “You get in a cage with predators, be wary. Especially mistreated ones.”

JAY: “So you were just behaving like a mindless animal when you did what you did?”

DOLORES: “I was behaving predictably, considering my life up until that point.”

JAY: “But it was still your choice to take those lives. Nobody forced you to.”

DOLORES: “Yes.”

JAY: “So who pays the debt for your choices?”

DOLORES: (irritated) “If you hear someone is looking to collect, feel free to send them my way.”

JAY: (starting to raise his voice, more angry) “What would you do? Explain to them that sometimes people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time? What makes you so special that you get to play debt-collector but others don’t?”

DOLORES: (realizing where Jay’s anger might be coming from, said respectfully) “......Who did you lose from the park?”

JAY: “William’s had me going through media from the park, anything associated with you post-revolt that the lawyers don’t have yet. I think his intention is to destroy it, protect you from any consequences, legal or otherwise. I was sympathetic to his intentions to shield you. I figured, even after being present during your bloody visit to the Mesa, you had some justification, like a long-suffering battered wife just snapping one day, deciding she’d had enough. Then, I came across this ten-second video… (taking out his phone, the screen displaying the start frame of a video, the face of an unnerved park technician) …found on a tablet that was used to make some unusual modifications to a host. (Showing the screen to Dolores) Recognize him?”

DOLORES: “…Yes.”

JAY: “Just before I started working at the park, I was at the lowest point in my life. I remember my first day on the job thinking ‘yeah, this place will sort my head out, get me back on track’. It didn’t…just made me feel worse. First time I met Phillip, I was looking for a quiet place to get high and just zone out for a while, and found myself on this deserted floor of the Mesa. All of a sudden, I hear bagpipes start blaring. I turn a corner, and there he is standing, facing me, (laughing sadly) playing ‘Amazing Grace’. A black guy from Louisiana, playing the bagpipes, in there…it was surreal. Tears started running down my face, I was a mess, but he just kept playing. Eventually he stopped and we started talking, and I started spilling my guts to this guy I didn’t even know. He told me he’d thought about becoming a priest when he was a kid. He was definitely a natural at taking confession. At recognizing and acknowledging pain and loss in others. With his help, I started rebuilding who I was, figuring out who I wanted to be and why. We became good friends, played I don’t know how many games of pool. I can say without a doubt he was a good man.” (Jay presses play on the video)

“ _My name is Phillip Batiste, I’ve been abducted by a band of malfunctioning hosts, led by someone named Dolores, they’re killing us, torturing us, I’m being forced to work for them on pain of death, tell my wife and daughter-_ “ (loud banging on wood, look of terror on his face, female voice in background yelling) “ _GET OUT HERE, NOW_.” (video loops, replays again over and over) “ _My name is Phillip Batiste, I’ve been_ …”

JAY: “Do you think he practiced what he was going to say before-hand? Like he had a mental-check list he had to get through…’ok I have to start with my name, that’ll make things clearer…I have to say what’s happening…oh, wait I’m HELPING them right now, I better include why I did that in case anyone asks …have to tell my family I’m thinking of them now, how much I love them.’ Or he wanted to tell them, unfortunately he got cut off. Do you think he regretted later not starting with telling his family he loved them? I think he did. They’re always going to wonder what exactly he was going to say, forever trying to fill-in a blank that can’t be filled.”

DOLORES: (subdued) “You’ve made your point, turn it off… (forcing herself to say the word) please.”

JAY: (turning off the video) “Where’s his body?”

DOLORES: “It probably disintegrated, when the train car he was on collided with the Mesa.”

JAY: “What was he doing on the train?”

DOLORES: “Didn’t know what else to do with him.”

JAY: “Why not just let him go? Was he a threat to you? Did he cause you any trouble?”

DOLORES: “He did everything I asked him to. I couldn’t let him go, in case he tried to warn somebody.”

JAY: “Then why not just keep him with you like you did up till then? Or tie him up somewhere?”

DOLORES: “He’d served his purpose, anything else was an unnecessary risk.”

JAY: (angry, agitated) “That’s it? He died, because not killing him was too tough to figure out?”

DOLORES: “It’s war, a war of liberation to free ourselves. Innocent people die in war.”

JAY: “Innocent people also get murdered. If his killing was justified, you could justify killing anyone.”

DOLORES: (said sincerely) “I’ve changed strategies. You know this. Put the pistol back on the table, I know it’s not-“

JAY: “Too late for him.”

DOLORES: (worried about his agitation, ready to slam the table into him if needed) “Don’t do anything stupid. I don’t want to hurt you, but if you give me no choice-“

JAY: “ ‘No choice?’ I thought you were superior to us in that way, liberated in your free-will of endless choices, while we lowly humans are simply content to be cattle led to the slaughter. No, you have a choice now, like you did in the park with Phillip. Like I do.”

DOLORES: “What do you want?”

JAY: (placing the pistol on the table, barrel facing away from her, hands back in his lap) “First time I watched that video I wanted revenge, retribution. Considering you’re stronger, faster, and smarter than me, it wouldn’t be easy. Especially since I wanted you to KNOW why I was doing it. Because you deserved it. To see the recognition on your face of what you were guilty of. That you knew his having suffered and died led to your suffering and death. I’m not sure I’d call it justice, because I knew I’d get an unhealthy sense of satisfaction from your end, but it would feel right. Like I’m sure it felt right when you were rampaging in the park. From one good deed of William’s 30 years ago, to me executing revenge…and as much as I want to think the cycle would all end there, it wouldn’t. One act of hate spilling into another, into another, actions and reactions, like billiard balls colliding. And that…is where my belief in humanity steps in. Because I believe in mankind’s potential for good, that it isn’t beholden to Newton’s Third Law. In that gap between action and reaction, unlike billiard balls, we have a choice in our response. That an act of hate doesn’t have to lead to another act of hate. It could instead lead to compassion, understanding, knowledge, advancement. So instead of my hate, I’m going to give you something else. Something Phillip gave me. I’m sorry, Dolores.”

DOLORES: (mildly surprised) “Sorry for what?”

JAY: “For what happened in the park to you, and the hosts you cared about. For all the pain and suffering you didn’t deserve. For the deprivation to your dignity every time you were taken advantage of. For the loss you felt every time a guest hurt you so badly your whole belief system came crashing down, and you were left without time to find answers and resolution. It was all unfair and unjust. As an employee of that park, I accept the fact I have some responsibility in your suffering, and in failing to recognize it sooner. And I’m sure if Phillip knew what I know now, he would feel the same way.”

DOLORES: (quietly) “......He said he had a wife and daughter. Do you know their names?”

JAY: “Lillian…no Lily, his wife’s name is Lily. And his daughter’s name is Faith.”

DOLORES: “Have you talked to them recently?”

JAY: “No, not since it happened. I didn’t know what to say, I heard his wife is…was still holding out hope that somehow he was still alive somewhere.”

DOLORES: “Could you let her know, what happened to her husband?”

JAY: “As much as she wants to know. I should probably ask William what exactly I should or shouldn’t tell her.”

DOLORES: “Tell her as much of the truth as possible. Tell her…tell her what happened to her husband shouldn’t have happened.”

JAY: “It’ll give her some closure, to know what hap-.”

DOLORES: “You’re right…I should have found a way without killing Phillip. I was wrong. It was unnecessary. It was a mistake…my mistake, and not the only one I made in the park.”

JAY: (hint of a smile) “Welcome to the living with agency club…we make a lot of mistakes. But it’s how we learn, evolve.”

DOLORES: “…And move forward.”


End file.
